Spring has Sprung, 2020 Version

Let's start with the yard. We had plenty of help with the mulch this year and it's all down by the first week of April, thanks to Hunter.

Epimediums

This little loader was not sufficient. Bucket was too small and it didn't easily clear the edge of the truck. We made it work but next year we'll use a real loader again. The grasses are mowed, pre-emergent down, beautyberries and other shrubs pruned. We're seeing 100% survival of the transplanted hellebores in the woodland area, and the epimediums are starting to poke through.

In the greenhouse, most plants look good. We have strawberry guava and grumichama fruit set. Pitomba is flowering as never before. We lost a calamondin, and a couple of the other citrus trees don't look great. The star apples have some marginal leaf necrosis, I wonder if they didn't like so much fertilizer. Hopefully we get them outside soon and they perk up. I took some fall cuttings of grapes, and some of them are pushing leaves.

Frontenac Gris

Speaking of grapes, we have the vineyard pruned. The Chardonel look like a complete loss. They didn't look great last fall but we got 3 gallons of wine from them. It may be the last Chardonel wine we make. My plan is to replace these with Frontenac Gris from cuttings. Aside from the Norton losses to crown gall, we're otherwise in good shape. Foch broke bud 4/9. We replaced some of the Norton with 10 Itasca vines. Itasca is described as having "aromas of pear, quince, violet, melon, minerals along with faint notes of honey." It broke bud already on 4/10. Another 10 Norton were replaced with La Crescent. This grape is used to make off-dry to sweeter wines and is known for "aromas are primarily apricot, peach and citrus." I'm linking the Stark Brothers page here because after the crown gall trouble on the vines from AA Vineyards, I found a new source. Our Frontenac, Vidal and Traminette look strong and I see bud swell on at least 9 Nortons. 

Itasca foreground, row 1; La Crescent row 2

Foch and Traminette

Jake and Taylor were in town for a few weeks after being sidelines due to the pandemic. Jake fished at every opportunity (thanks to Dave, Jane, Betsy, Jorgen, Tom, Jamie). 

Vineyard 2020 Budbreak Log

Foch 4/9
Itasca 4/10
Frontenac 4/12
Vidal 4/15
Traminette 4/12

Finally...Gold!

The Kansas City Cellarmasters 2020 Wine Classic is in the books. I'm starting to figure out what judges like and what performs well in a wine competition. It's not always the wine we prefer to drink in the evening.

Let's start with the bad. Just one. Blackberry. Again. I took careful steps to avoid loss of color and to sweeten this 2017 Blackberry more, but it wasn't enough. "Unbalanced, needs more sugar." "Grassy, no blackberry" was strange to see when truly the only thing that is in this wine is blackberries. "Diesel flavor finish." 9.33. I give up. Blackberry pie anyone?

The rest of my wines at least medaled. Granted, they are pretty generous with medals but this is my best performance to date. The 2017 Zinfandel earned 14.5, good for bronze. Two comments about it being tart. "Overall nice wine."

The 2018 Grenache Rosé got a bronze with 13.67. There was only one comment, "On the thin side." Apparently it was solid if unspectacular, according to these judges. I'm ok with solid.

The Chardonel from 2018 is in my opinion one of my best wines to date. Alas, in competition it was good only for 13.83, bronze. "Notes of melon, flint, citrus, butter." "Crisp, flinty, minerally, apples." Yes, I like this reviewer! "Thin body" "thin, medium finish" from the others.

My 2018 Traminette earned a bronze with 13.5. "Notes of spice, floral." "Low tannins." One sheet with no comments. At least it wasn't thin.

I sent in the 2017 Blueberry which, at that time, I made with some Merlot concentrate. Got one comment that "flavors did not blend well." "Not much blueberry flavor" contrasted with another reviewer, "Fruit forward with Merlot influence." Overall, 15.33 was good for a silver medal.

As an offshoot of the 2017 elderberry, I made a port. To us, this is a delicious dessert drink. I don't have much left actually, but went ahead and sent two bottles in the Fortified/Dessert Wine category. "Nice flavor." "Nice after dinner drink." and then literally two reviewers wrote "Nice dessert wine!" The port earned a silver with 15.50.

I've been fooling around with the 2017 Pear wine for a long time. It was made in two parts, neither went dry, one got some H2S, and, well, it just took a lot of tweaking. All of this for some 7 gallons of wine which to me tastes uncomfortably like apples. I still haven't brought myself to bottle all of it. Well maybe I should, because the judges liked it. "Nice bouquet." "Pleasant" "Very nice, couldn't find much to complain about." "Tastes young." "I think that this will mature into a fine wine." 16.5, silver.

The 2017 Vignoles came from our friend Bill down the road. He couldn't get the mechanical harvester in to pic the grapes so called us. We had to scramble a little bit. It's not my favorite, because to me it's a brassy, tart, in-your-face sort of wine. But the judges really liked it. "Very nice!" "Nice color." "Nice finish." "Nice wine." 17.0. Finally, gold!

Too Much Nice Weather

Last weekend we visited Adam. In the spirit of a budding tropical fruit fanatic, he added a mango and Barbados Cherry, and this weekend he followed up with jaboticaba and avocado. A winter storm forced us to stay an extra day, so we went fishing with Bryan of Southern Thunder Fishing Charters.

Today it's sunny and 55F, the day after the winter solstice. Lisa and I took to the greenhouse in T-shirts for a day of cleanup, repotting, and the remainder of the greenhouse winter insulation.

Jake and I put the film up on the roof at Thanksgiving. It was so difficult that I almost resolved that this would be my last greenhouse winter. But I have a new idea, one that will not require this tiresome effort every year. Stay tuned in the spring for an update.

For now we're going with 0.7mil film again. We finally got the north and south ends sealed up today and it's a better job that the last couple of years, with less infiltration.

The citrus are generally doing well. One lime is in intensive care, but we have good crops of Persian lime, kumquat, calamondin, and satsuma.

I fired up the heat map for a few of the plants which aren't thriving.

Kari didn't do well in the pot over the summer and hasn't done any better in the greenhouse. So we moved it into the ground in the center bed and gave it a couple of good shovels worth of tasty compost.

Loquat is blooming, and a couple of the mangoes look like they are about to bloom as well.

Our forecast is for highs in the 50s to 60s the next several days. I have some wine work to do ahead of the KC Cellarmasters Annual Wine Classic, it will be tough to hide out in the basement when it is so nice outside.

Things I Wish I'd Known - Door Hinges

Filed under "things I wish I'd known 20 years ago" is the method of adjusting door hinges.

I tried this on the door out to the pool and it worked like a charm. The threshold for the screen door is bowed however, so I had to resort to other methods to get the screen door to close. After taking it down and putting it back about 10 times, I finally shimmed the entire thing up by about 1mm using some washers in the hinges.

Reclaiming the Front of the House

Yesterday weather-wise was miserable, made much better by a very nice Wolverine win over Notre Dame. But Sunday was beautiful, sunny with a high around 65F. Lisa and I took the opportunity to tame the yews.

We probably should prune the yews annually but somehow we don't get around to it every year. This time the Harry Lauder Walking Stick had gotten so big that between the tree and the yews, we couldn't see out of the dining room window. Today it got the Husqvarna treatment, as did the boxwoods.

 

Front of the house, before:

After:

Before:

After:

And the obligatory food picture - this is Brian's "Critter Gumbo" from Thursday night band practice. It had pheasant, rabbit, shrimp; greens with salted pork shoulder; homemade applesauce, and cornbread. The band played well Thursday night.

Packing the Greenhouse

Winter approaches, and once again everything must come inside or get left behind. This year, we say goodbye to Plumeria pudica. The plant makes very fragrant white flowers, but it refuses to solidly root in the pot and as a result it constantly tips over and grow awkwardly. We made some interesting plumeria wine from its flowers but said wine ruined us on Traminette. So long, P. pudica.

We also bid adieu to Psidium myrtoides, purple guava. I grew two trees from seeds brought from Puerto Rico. I managed with great difficulty to prune and stake these into a tree-like form, and they got to around 5 feet. But theses trees also refused to firmly root in the pot and required constant staking. Worse, the marble-sized fruit were not worthy of wine or anything else. The smell reminded me of something between motor oil and skunk, and they taste was bitter. 

Some of the plants in the south window did not handle the transition well. The loquat and one of the sapodillas will lose some leaves. I walked in Thursday morning to find one contributing cause - no heat. It was 46F inside. I didn't have time to troubleshoot until Saturday, and finally found the culprits.

A replacement thermocouple

What you can find on Amazon for $9 is $36 at the local hardware store. I coughed up the money for the only one in stock, and I had the north furnace going in about 10 minutes. The second one is coming from Amazon in a week, we'll get by until then with one furnace.

There were a couple of nice fruit this week. We brought home the largest guava to date, this one nearly baseball sized. Noel's Big Red sugar apple was sweet and tasty, even if small and seedy.

A tour: